Motojunky

I installed a Curt front hitch on my '99 a couple of days ago and thought I'd share a few thoughts. Brain dump below in no particular order.

The hitch makes a noticeable positive difference in the feel of the front end. If nothing else, there is a reduction in creaking and groaning from the front end.

The hitch was $101 from Amazon (free shipping w/Prime). I've seen them in several places for around $110-$115.

I wanted a good front recovery point and a hitch for a small cargo rack. I looked at a few aftermarket bumpers but I kinda like the look of stock. It didn't hurt that this was a less expensive option. I have a 3" lift and 31" tires and don't think the hitch will be a limiting factor for my off road use. It tucks up pretty nicely - if I get hung up on it, I'd be hitting the front lower plastic anyway. It's a limitation that I can live with.

Installation took longer than 30 minutes. I've done a few Curt hitch installs so I'm familiar with the "pull the bolt and spacer through the frame" bit. The driver's side was tricky due to the steering box. It might be worth taking the front bumper off. I spent a lot of my time measuring and trimming the front plastic fascia so it would look OEMish. I guess I spent three hours or so, sometimes fiddling with other stuff: where the heck are my dremel cut off wheels!?, waiting for paint to dry a little, jumping up and down with hot metal bits in my shirt while drilling... You know, normal stuff.

Think about which way the spacers will land inside the frame when you pull them in place. It's a PITA to get them out to flip them around when you don't think ahead.

The hitch gets sandwiched between the sway bar and "frame." The rear most bolt hole on the hitch is notched. This makes the physical placement of the hitch easy. Put the rear sway bar in place with just the rear bolts in a few turns to hold it. Then slip the hitch in and zip tie the safety chain loops to the bumper. Now you don't have to hold the hitch up while you work.

It took creative use of big honking channel locks to move the sway bar brackets around to start the forward bolts. Not difficult - it just took a few minutes to find the right tool.

Before any of that, I bolted the hitch in place without the sway bar to take measurements to cut up the front plastic. A dremel with a cut off wheel made for clean cuts without too much effort. Measure twice, cut once...

Once I had the four sway bar bolts in place and tight (not torqued, but tight), I used the hitch and spacers as a template to drill the forward holes. I used a 1/2 bit vs. the 17/32 bit specified in the instructions - because I had a 1/2 in the toolbox. I painted the freshly drilled holes before putting the bolts in. Then I torqued the six bolts per the instructions.

The front plastic fascia normally gets installed with the plastic lip above the bumper. I attached it from below so that it can be removed with the hitch and bumper in place. I used some plastic automotive trim screws I had laying around.

The end result looks neat and tidy. I'll take and post a pic in the near future.

XJRed96

Photos or it didn't happen.

Motojunky

Fair enough!

XJRed96

Very Clean install. The extra time and attention to detail paid off.

BlueRidgeMark

Yes, indeed! Very nice! Congratulations, and thanks for the write-up.

How's your access to the safety loops?

Motojunky

Access is easy, but if the hooks took load, they'd push the fascia out a little. I opted to leave it this way until a use case shows me that I need to change it. I think it'll be fine like this and I liked keeping it fairly clean. We'll see.

I was inspired by this pic: